Birmingham city council has contracted Capita through the joint venture Service Birmingham to supply its information technology and call centre requirements until 2020. This is part of the council's Business Transformation programme, which, running since 2005, aims to save £1bn by 2016.

So far some 45 jobs have been offshored or are planned to be offshored by the end of the summer, with up to 55 more to go by the end of the year. Of its decision, a Service Birmingham spokesman said:

"As part of our ongoing partnership with Birmingham city council, we are exploring how we could utilise some overseas expertise to help deliver a cost-effective addition to our existing Birmingham operation. As the city council's partner, we are committed to operating as efficiently as possible. We therefore need to offer the council the best combination of operating models to deliver cost savings and efficiency gains while maintaining our existing service levels."

But Unite union official Peter Allenson fears this could be "just the tip of the iceberg and other councils could follow suit. Thousands of public sector jobs could go. Once these jobs go, they will not come back."

Without coming anywhere near raising the slogan of "British jobs for British workers", I believe unions in the council should be able to halt this action fairly easily.

Offshoring and outsourcing work to call and contact centres has increasingly got itself a bad name and some jobs have been "backshored" from India by the likes of BT.

The Unite union was unable to provide figures on how much moving the jobs would both save and cost, and what the balance would be overall. Unfortunately, the council did not respond to an inquiry on the same matter. But judging on past experience, offshoring does not provide the massive savings that its proponents – like management consultants and IT and facilities companies – suggest. In addition to the costs of transition – which includes bringing workers over here to be trained by existing staff so they can then go back to do the job – there are also costs of co-ordination and communication from afar. Into this mix must also be added the risks of becoming reliant upon another part of the world that may be subject to geopolitical upheavals.

If this kind of political message can be got across to the citizens of Birmingham, it could provide the praetorian guard to the likely industrial action by Unison against attacks on its members' pay and conditions at Birmingham council. Put together, there is no reason why Birmingham city council's offshoring cuts plan could not be sent the way of those projects of its political soulmates in Barnet, Suffolk and Brighton.

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